People Try To Typecast Astronauts

I Think America Has A Responsibility To Maintain Its Leadership In Technology And Its Moral Leadership In The World, To Explore, To Seek Knowledge.

Today, We Are On A Path Of Decay. We Are Seeing The Book Close On Five Decades Of Accomplishment As The Leader In Human Space Exploration.

Curiosity Is The Essence Of Human Existence And Exploration Has Been Part Of Humankind For A Long Time. The Exploration Of Space, Like The Exploration Of Life, If You Will, Is A Risk. We've Got To Be Willing To Take It.

Once I Finally Stepped On The Moon, No Matter What Was To Come Of The Next Three Days - Or The Rest Of My Life - Nobody Could Take Those Steps From Me. People Ask How Long Will They Be There, And I Say Forever, However Long Forever Is, Like My Daughter’s Initials That I Scribbled In The Sand [tdc For Tracy Dawn Cernan].

Chemical Propulsion Is Obsolete To Go Anywhere Other Than The Moon. Three Days - That's Acceptable. But For Mars, We Need Propulsion Technologies To Get Us There In, Say, 60 Days - Then Spend Whatever Length Of Time We Want To Spend And Return When We Want To Come Home.